It is also without merit to dismiss a feature just because it is in another game and you want your game to be different. I also do not want to see the power creep caused by game-enhancing mods creating a level of player efficiency that forces devs to create more complex encounters. But this does not preclude convenience mods that allow us to customize our UI and therefore game experience to our liking. Part of what makes an MMO fun is being comfortable just being in the world. The UI is how we interact with that world, and just as in real life we like to tweak our surroundings to suit us.

This. For all the talk of "play the game, not the UI"--which I'm cool with--there still is a UI. We need it to play the game. It would be nice to be able to organize it to suit our individual style. I'm a bit baffled that a game would be written these days without this consideration.

I do not dismist the feature because I want the game to be different, I dismis it because it has proven in the past to be as much a bane as it is a boon. I'm of the mind that if you give them an inch they will take a mile when it comes to addon design. Moving bits of the UI around, resizing it, possibly even skinning it is fine. you could do most of that out of the box in GW1. While I'm a bit disappointed that the customization options are a bit sparser in GW2 I think that should be added from Anet's end not by opening up the API to moders. We've seen it time and again where what starts out as simple UI tweaks can quickly grow into addons that impact game play to an extent that the devs either have to break the addon or just design around the addon.

No game needs it, it adds an aditional feature...not understood why people don't like addons, it gives close to no advantage over people who don't use it. :P

Just saw this thread so sorry for late response, it seems a lot of pvp addons in wow do give advantages though, especially when it comes to pvp and you have people who use addons which show timers on basically everything or if they receive a debuff, they don't need to be perfect and watch everything when they just see all these counters and shit. Though overall yes I see your point.

simple UI tweaks can quickly grow into addons that impact game play to an extent that the devs either have to break the addon or just design around the addon.

Just a note on this- few developers seem opposed to having to design around addons. Most see addons as a way to tweak and adjust encounters around the aspects players find most important.

Not too long ago there was a Scott Hartsman AMA where he talked about what they learned from addons in making encounters tighter and more focused. Tankspot also had an interview with one of the WOW devs remarking similarly. Early 3rd party tools in games like EQ were also major steps forward in creating tight encounters for 989 as well.

Just saying, we haven't seen addons negatively impact games to any equal or greater degree than the benefits brought in player options and developer crowd sourcing.

Auction & Crafting addons that I used to make over 500k gold.
PvP Addons for premades, targets, show trinket useage & cooldowns. If I was going against someone without addons there was no contest.
Encounter addons that completely trivialized the content ".....In 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. 1"
Convenience and aesthetic addons, etc.

I spent a ton of time fiddling with and configuring these addons. It was almost like a mini-game haha.

And all I have to say is I'm so glad Arenanet has a design philosophy that eschews addons. I applaud them for this, for me it makes the game more interesting, challenging and immersive.

Just a note on this- few developers seem opposed to having to design around addons. Most see addons as a way to tweak and adjust encounters around the aspects players find most important.

Not too long ago there was a Scott Hartsman AMA where he talked about what they learned from addons in making encounters tighter and more focused. Tankspot also had an interview with one of the WOW devs remarking similarly. Early 3rd party tools in games like EQ were also major steps forward in creating tight encounters for 989 as well.

Just saying, we haven't seen addons negatively impact games to any equal or greater degree than the benefits brought in player options and developer crowd sourcing.

Kind of a myth, bro.

Hmmm? I can think of a few situations off the top of my head: the rogue poison swap where automating the swap with macro/addons led them to break the functionality rather then let it continue, decursive (of course), heck, I remember a number of addons back in the days of AQ for C'thun and so on, without which the encounters were nigh impossible.

Besides, your definition of the problem is somewhat problematic, "negatively impact games to any equal or greater degree..." calls for a bit of a judgement call. I can certainly see why AN would not want to foster the same attitude that exists in the WoW player base regarding addons/macros.

That is, an attitude that for virtually every task, the key is not to "get better", it's "get the right addon and it's easy". Certain tasks seem dauntingly difficult without addons and trivial with them, and that doesn't seem like a good design for a game (IMO): even simple things, like, for example, finding pets or rare spawn NPCs now has addons devoted to it (a cultural shift that has existed for years).

WoW, at least as it stands before the launch of MoP, has a culture where the very first thing one needs to do after a patch is update their own GUI. This may create a feeling of ownership, of being in collaboration with the game maker perhaps... but it also means that there is a markedly different experience between people that know how to alter (or have interest in fiddling with) their GUI, and those that do not.

As has been observed elsewhere, a key consideration in much of these decisions seems to be the desire to work towards eSports. That is one area where absolute uniformity is definitely desired, and indeed may very well be mandatory for serious consideration.

Sounds like the developers use the addon as a failsafe for their own shortcoming, IE; not telegraphing the abilities of the boss like they should. Even if they fail to do their job, the product of a fan will fix it for them.

When player-testing Infernal Dawn, for instance, a few of us started thinking about what was going on in terms of: "Is this going to end up in KBM, or should we make it clearer?" Which is how we got people growing when charmed on conclave, how we got the stomp on Ituziel, and a few others.

It doesn't seem like something that addons alone are or should even be responsible for. Surely a developer could ask a similar question of their design like "Is this difficult to see, or should we make it clearer?"

"Questions are for those seeking answers. Those who have answers are those who have asked questions." -Mike R. (Malthurius)

I submit AVR as exhibit A. Moders found a way through the API to draw objects on screen. They further discovered that the API gave access to information on camera position. With some very clever math they managed to be able to give the appearance of drawing objects on the world. From there it became a simple mater to mark out where not to stand (or where to stand) on a boss encounter. Bliz had to remove the ability for finding the position of the camera from the API because that one mod made fights completely trivial.

DBM and its ilk can be either a blessing or a curse depending on who your talking to. It made fights easier and did lead to the encounter design tuneing you spoke of. On the other hand we may have goten too much of a good thing as fights got more and more complex around the asumption of haveing a boss mod avalible. It got to the point that bliz had to add in their own form of boss raid warnings for encounters for more and more abilities.

Like it or not the addons do impact game development. How much of that impact lands on the pro or con side of the final tally is totaly subjective.

Having addons in this game would be a good thing, I can't understand why people are defending arenanet for not having support for them.
You can argue that the game does not need them, but personalizing UI would add alot for the game and not take anything away from the experience.
Guess its just people who don't like when people point out bad things about "their" game.

Having addons in this game would be a good thing, I can't understand why people are defending arenanet for not having support for them.
You can argue that the game does not need them, but personalizing UI would add alot for the game and not take anything away from the experience.
Guess its just people who don't like when people point out bad things about "their" game.

And you're missing the point if you think that. There's no reason for addons if the UI is well designed. I believe everyone should be using the same UI anyways. No advantage for anyone (and that is what addons are for in WoW, something to give an advantage that the game doesn't give you naturally).

Having addons in this game would be a good thing, I can't understand why people are defending arenanet for not having support for them.
You can argue that the game does not need them, but personalizing UI would add alot for the game and not take anything away from the experience.Guess its just people who don't like when people point out bad things about "their" game.

Why do people always rebound to this thinking when the opinion of GW2 "fans" isn't in line with theirs? I'm honeslty kind of sick of it.

Anyway, ArenaNet did say something about allowing the same level of customization of the UI as they did in GW1, but we haven't see it yet. I'm all more UI customization, but addons would just open up a whole other can of worms other than just "customizing UI". I honestly think it would be better if the developers developed the game and the players played it.

"Questions are for those seeking answers. Those who have answers are those who have asked questions." -Mike R. (Malthurius)

Allowing addons just encourages the developers to slack off and not provide the best out-of-the-box UI they can, which, IMO, should be discouraged. Some games are all but unplayable without addons, which is just sickening. On the other hand, GW2's UI just needs the ability to resize and move widgets to be perfect. Skinning could be useful too, if well-implemented, but is so minor to be negligible (since skinning can take away from the painterly aesthetic of GW2)

Having addons in this game would be a good thing, I can't understand why people are defending arenanet for not having support for them.
You can argue that the game does not need them, but personalizing UI would add alot for the game and not take anything away from the experience.
Guess its just people who don't like when people point out bad things about "their" game.

It's actually Arenanet's game

They have a vision and a philosophy plus getting into eSports.

The addon game is thatawayz------------------>

Please be respectful of other posters. Their opinions are no more or less legitimate than your own. -Edge

Having addons in this game would be a good thing, I can't understand why people are defending arenanet for not having support for them.
You can argue that the game does not need them, but personalizing UI would add alot for the game and not take anything away from the experience.
Guess its just people who don't like when people point out bad things about "their" game.

Theres a big gap between customizing the layout and look of your UI and having addons that provide information and functionality that is flat out unavailable with the stock UI. The former is merely a mater of personal preference to the player, the later can and will change the way the game is played by those that use them and that inturn impacts those that dont use them in a number of ways. None of us are arguing that you shouldn't be able to customize the UI to have the layout of your likeing. What we are arguing is that functionality should be there out of the box, developed by the developers of the game and not by opening up the API to outside sources so they can potentially produce mods that are borderline exploits by their very nature.

We acknowledge the fact that the sparse customization of the UI is something of a flaw in the game. However we want the dev's to fix that themselves and not open up the can of worms that is addons so they can take the lazy way out.

Play the game not the UI, one of my favourite things to do is playing the auction house and to do so I use a nifty little add on called auctionater, it keeps track of all my purchases and sales in the past and has a great little add on feature I will not be able to play the AH using the built in trading post which is basic to say the least. Does this mean that a part of how I play mmos has been removed....just saying that not all add ons cover your screen with information some are used to make other facets of life a lot easier.

The only "real" one I used in WoW was log analyzers (death log mostly) which frankly I'd love to see in GW2 . If you can't learn from a mistake (death) how can you learn? At least they do have a kind of personal death log, I just wish I could see other people ones as well.

The biggest use that bother me with "no addons" policy right now is no UI customization. Orb style health just have to go (for me), it's very misleading. It feels/looks like you have the most health when you are closer to half health, something that would be an easy fix with a bar instead and the location is not very good either(in my opinion). I'd like to be able to move the bars, I see no reason to have a ten buttons long line when I need to move my eyes to focus on either side, why can I have two rows of five where I can easily see everything?

Play the game not the UI, one of my favourite things to do is playing the auction house and to do so I use a nifty little add on called auctionater, it keeps track of all my purchases and sales in the past and has a great little add on feature I will not be able to play the AH using the built in trading post which is basic to say the least. Does this mean that a part of how I play mmos has been removed....just saying that not all add ons cover your screen with information some are used to make other facets of life a lot easier.

Then let the developers improve it if it doesn't serve it's purpose adequately.

"Questions are for those seeking answers. Those who have answers are those who have asked questions." -Mike R. (Malthurius)

Huh, I'm kind of surprised this game doesn't have the option to at least tweak the frilly stuff seeing as the audience it's designed for. I know it doesn't need the technical stuff but I'm surprised they don't have options for like colors or borders or "themes", you know stuff like that.

Would be nice, maybe ill give them a call later and as ask them to put it in, would be nice to play the auction house in gw2 and rip of people with things i bought for 1 copper.

I remember seeing a video of a player making good use of the "order" function in the GW2 AH. He would buyout the cheapest auctions on the AH, and sell them to the highest buyer in the orders and make free gold basically. It was pretty funny.

"Questions are for those seeking answers. Those who have answers are those who have asked questions." -Mike R. (Malthurius)